


The Pinnacle of Knighthood

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Chivalry, Cooking, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Questioning Beliefs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: "Living as a knight is certainly not an easy task. I know it will mean much pain, strife, and heartache. But I still want to pursue that dream. Talking to you has reminded me... I'm not the type who gives up easily."Dreams come true in ways you never expect.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert & Ingrid Brandl Galatea, Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	The Pinnacle of Knighthood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smallestbrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallestbrown/gifts).



> Written for the wonderful [smallestbrown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallestbrown/pseuds/smallestbrown) who wanted to see Ashe and Ingrid as knights in (emotional) armor! As some of you might know, thinking about the consequences of war is important to me and something I always enjoy writing, so this was really a pleasure to write. I hope you enjoy it, too!

Ingrid had only just finished cleaning her steed’s hooves when the stable doors burst open to let the springtime chill whoosh in with Ashe and his horse, both shimmering with perspiration. That sheen of sweat’s glimmer grew more pronounced when Ashe yanked his helmet off with a dramatic sigh. His horse, ignoring his exuberance, plodded to the trough and dunked her head in the cold water.

“Whew!” Ashe added for good measure, heedless of his horse’s bubbly snort of disapproval. “Those legends spend a great deal of time describing King Loog’s noble armor, but they don’t say how sweaty his face must have been behind that helmet!”

Ingrid hid her grin behind the saddle blanket. “Those descriptions served a purpose, I bet. They had to make his ridiculous helmet sound impressive, after all.”

“’Ridiculous?’ He was the ‘King of Lions!’” Ashe argued, as if that was much of an explanation on its own.

Ingrid tossed the saddle over the blanket next, tugging the fabric smooth again. “Next time we’re in the palace, we can go to the royal armory,” she suggested. “They have it on display and everything.”

“They do?” Ashe gaped, an excited schoolboy to the end. Ingrid’s heart stuttered once like it had tried to mimic that same innocent joy and failed.

She stopped hiding her grin instead. “They do.” Before Ashe could bounce on the balls of his booted feet, she teased, “ _Far back_ in the armory.”

He puffed out his cheeks. “Well, a little exaggeration is normal,” he mumbled.

“Too true.” They’d learned that much these past six years, at least. “Shouldn’t your squire be helping you with that ‘sweaty armor,’ Ser Ashe?”

His hands froze over the steel. “Oh! I didn’t even—I suppose. I’m still not used to all the, uh…”

During the knighting ceremony, Ashe had looked so much more resolute than her. Ingrid hadn’t been able to keep her gaze from straying away from King Dimitri’s somber expression and speech to stare at her fellow knight and former classmate. She’d tried to rearrange her own features in some approximation of his and suffered for it when Sylvain congratulated her after by asking if she’d been too nervous to eat beforehand whereas Felix had informed her she’d looked like a constipated cow.

She’d been too embarrassed to yell at them, because both had been true.

“I’m not really used to it either,” Ingrid admitted with a last tug to the saddle belt.

“Oh. That’s kind of reassuring coming from you—wait, are you out on another mission?” Ashe’s eyebrows pinched together as he finally took in her preparations. “Did I miss something on the roster? We hadn’t anticipated so many bandits this time, so it took us longer than expected to return.”

“What? No,” Ingrid said after scanning him quickly for injuries. “I’m just going to the market.”

Ashe beamed and refastened his gauntlets. “Oh! I’d love to come with, if you don’t mind. It’s my turn on cooking duty; I could make some Daphnel stew for you!”

Ingrid’s stomach had rumbled the second Ashe said it was _his_ turn to cook. Perfect timing. “If you’d like, I would not dismiss your company. But it’s a long trip.”

“What?” Ashe glanced at her steed. “Oh! Why are you taking your pegasus? I’m sure it won’t be busy at this hour.”

Ingrid swung herself into the saddle and held out a hand. “Not the Fhirdiad market, no. But by the time I arrive at the market I had in mind, the spice stall might be sold out of chamomile. Or,” she added with a meaningful smile, “ _real_ ingredients for Daphnel stew.”

She didn’t need much longer. Ashe’s smile grew, he slapped his gauntleted hand in her leather-gloved hand, and she helped him sit behind her on the heavy flight saddle.

* * *

They landed in the hills between Galatea and Conand territory. The valley market had been visible from above, however; Ashe had oohed in approval sooner than Ingrid could stammer excuses for the yellow grass on drought-affected soil. This wasn’t Galatea Castle’s town market, with its smaller selection and familiar faces. But although this town had more fertile soil, it was still _Galatea_ soil, and five years of Dukedom leadership had taken its toll on already-struggling land.

“You’re right! It _is_ bustling,” Ashe had commented, failing to keep his eagerness in check, and all of Ingrid’s self-consciousness had faded.

“We’d better hurry,” she said as she kissed her pegasus’s muzzle goodbye. “I’d forgotten about the sea breeze.”

“You’re an amazing flier,” Ashe told her while they stumbled down the dry hills in armor. “Even if I’d kept up my wyvern training, I don’t think I’d ever have felt so confident in the sky like you.”

Ingrid tucked her hair behind her ears to cover the pleased pink heating her cheeks. _Due for a cut_ , she’d thought this morning, but maybe longer bangs had their uses. “Discipline and consistency will get you anywhere,” she said. “It’s nothing special.”

“Oh, sure! But—”

“Oh, wait, look!” Ingrid jabbed a finger in the direction of one stall close to the market entrance. Large iron pots on coals sat behind a sleepy-looking butcher and the chickens strung above his stall. Each of Ingrid’s steps brought the tantalizing scent of simmering meat and onions closer. “Forgive me for interrupting, but—how would you like to try some proper Daphnel cooking for yourself?”

Ashe’s eyes lit up. “That sounds incredible! But aren’t you worried about the spice shop?”

Ingrid craned her neck, searching for it. She could see a few patrons milling about, but they seemed more like window shoppers and plenty of dried herbs and hunks of salt remained on the table. “No, I don’t think we’re in danger yet. I suppose we still managed to make good time.”

They followed their noses more than their eyes through the crowd. Ingrid felt like she had to swallow with every other step the nearer they drew to the butcher. She was positively salivating by the time they arrived. Beside her, Ashe sighed, not faring much better.

“Oh, this is completely different, just by the aroma alone,” he said to her. “It’s nothing like the monastery and certainly not like anything I’ve cooked!”

“I should hope not,” the reclining butcher snorted. “I’ve got the best poultry in Galatea, if not the Kingdom.” Eyes still closed, he jabbed a thumb behind him at the dangling chickens. They were indeed very plump.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a little girl,” Ingrid said to Ashe. “I still think he’s right, even if the Kingdom is…much bigger now.”

East of Galatea, over the mountain range and occasional volcano, was Daphnel territory. Ailell wasn’t far from there. Ingrid’s own father had nearly married her off to the Alliance in his desperation for a good match and prosperous land. At the time, her loyalty to her family had warred with her loyalty to the crown. Now, however, all that land was Kingdom. All Ingrid struggled with now was her loyalty to her family.

“It smells delicious,” Ashe said, cutting into her thoughts. “I’d love to try a bowl. It’ll help me refine my own recipe, don’t you think?”

Ingrid certainly hoped so. “Of course! My treat,” she insisted as he reached for his coinpurse.

“I couldn’t possibly—”

“It’s a selfish request,” Ingrid smiled, fishing out enough coins for two servings. “We don’t always have enough time to fly down to Galatea every time I get homesick for some homemade stew, right? And meals always test better with friends.”

The butcher, who had opened his eyes to snatch the coins from the counter, now opened his eyes wider to look them up and down. Ingrid stood straighter, as if he would be able to see the resolve in her expression covered by the helmet she wore designed to protect her entire face from harsh wind. “You’re Kingdom knights,” he grunted. Ingrid wondered if that was supposed to be an insult, but when he got to his feet, he only bowed to each of them. “Thank you for your service.”

Most people didn’t know the difference between a soldier and a knight. Some strange part of Ingrid bristled at the thought. Not every soldier was capable of that level of undevoted loyalty just as not every knight was capable of that level of combat mastery. ‘Protect and serve’ held many meanings; even the books from her childhood had taught her that.

“It was our honor,” Ashe replied, his own helmet concealing less of his face. He’d been forced to hide against her back most of the flight, keeping the wind from his eyes and the conversation from his mouth. Ingrid was unsurprised to see that same pride and earnestness on his face now as she had during the knight ceremony.

“Well, you honor _me_. Discount for you today. No, I won’t hear otherwise. Well, unless I have to charge you for my pottery?”

They handed over the ceramic bowls Ingrid had brought. She stared at the butcher’s back while he slopped stew into each one, not bothering to mask her greed. Ashe, she knew, was grinning at her, but the smell of the happy and oblivious days of her childhood overrode all shame.

This was the market her brothers had always taken her to each birthday before the Tragedy. It had always felt like an exciting adventure, a special occasion to get away from the familiar sallow faces of the castle town and see new sights. “The future Duchess of Fraldarius should be more worldly,” they’d laughed each time, laughing less as she grew older and prepared for marriage. They stopped laughing forever when Glenn had, too.

What she hadn’t realized in time was that they had brought Ingrid here each year for the same reason Ingrid had brought Ashe now. This butcher made the best Daphnel stew in the Kingdom because the rest of Galatea was too poor. Too cold and dry for fat chickens to graze, for hearty onions to flourish. It wasn’t as though the butcher had much competition.

Still, Ashe closed his eyes after his very first spoonful and groaned appreciatively. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted.”

The butcher crossed his arms and nodded, satisfied. “Better be a good thing, lad. Er, Ser Knight.”

“Ser Ashe Ubert,” Ashe correct him with pride. “And yes, of course! It’s delicious. Isn’t it, _Ser Ingrid_?”

He placed a great deal of emphasis on her name, and Ingrid’s breath caught in her throat. Ashe was smiling at her like they shared a joke. _See_ , his grin said without words, _you can be recognized as a strong knight_ and _a Crest bearer._ Like revealing her identity was a sign of strength instead of a sign of weakness, that the name ‘Ingrid Brandl Galatea’ meant a protector of the crown and not a traitor to her House.

The repressed shame sprouted to life. Apologies bubbled to her tongue, but before they could escape her lips, the butcher nodded and said, “And Ser Ingrid. Hope it meets your muster, too.”

He hadn’t even batted an eye. This man hadn’t known her name.

This man hadn’t known her _title_.

“As ever,” she choked out. “Thank you again for the discount. Ashe, let’s—”

“Very least I can do,” the butcher cut in, settling back in his chair. “I wish I could afford to give you grub on the house, but…well, land’s still recovering after the war.” He smiled for the first time, but this time it had a vicious and victorious edge. “Anyone who helped drive those heartless monsters out is welcome to my respect and gratitude.”

The spoon froze halfway to Ingrid’s mouth. “’Heartless monsters?’” oblivious Ashe asked politely. “Were you overrun by demonic beasts here? I never knew.”

“Ashe, the spice stand—”

“Demonic what? No, you know what I mean.” The butcher waved his hand towards the south. “Those evil Adrestian bastards. Not a single one worth saving, least of all giving a bowl of my stew. Goddess bless the Savior King, sure, but She should also bless every single ‘savior’ in his army, I say.”

Ingrid thought of Dorothea’s small, sad smile in Enbarr. She didn’t need to look Ashe’s way to know he was thinking of Caspar’s enraged snarl in Fort Merceus.

“Thanks for your blessing,” she heard Ashe say, and it was easy to repeat some vague sentiment too, bland and tasting like nothing on her tongue just as the spiced stew had become. The butcher offered a cheerful salute as they said their awkward farewells.

Ashe didn’t comment on how she was leading them away from the spice stand and back toward the hills. The buzz and bustle of the market whispered to a dull hum as they left it behind. Wind whistled through the dry grass, replacing the sound with something worse than silence.

“Well,” Ashe finally said halfway up the rocky trail, “thank you for bringing me to your hometown. It was a privilege to try real Galatean cooking.”

Neither of them had spooned another bite of stew since the butcher’s remarks. “You honored me by joining me.” She could have left it at that, at the hollow acknowledgement and the half-truth, because yes, it had been an honor, and one she’d squandered. Through no fault of her own, yes, but… “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Huh?” Ashe’s head whipped around fast enough Ingrid moved to steady him. Stew dribbled out of her bowl onto the dust and grass, but she paid the wasted food no mind for once. “No, I’m fine. Thank you. But…sorry for what?”

She hesitated. “It’s nothing. Shall we finish our meals? We can sit on the hilltop.”

They both glanced down at their cooling bowls.

“Well, we’ve got some time,” Ashe said. “Relaxing might do us some good.”

“Or a meal,” Ingrid suggested, summoning a watery grin that Ashe matched.

“Let’s go this way.”

She followed Ashe to the highest hill. Her pegasus still grazed below them, content with her own dinner and trained well enough not to fly off on her own. Still, Ingrid prepared to sit and keep her in sight, but the clanking of steel hitting the ground in the opposite direction caught her attention first. Ashe had wriggled out of his outer armor for comfort as she’d expected. What she didn’t expect was to see him facing the ocean, away from the Kingdom and Alliance—no, the memory of Claude’s blank smirk reminded her, just the _Kingdom_.

“Things are different now, aren’t they?” Ashe asked softly. He lowered himself to the cold, hard ground like it was the most comfortable cushion in the world and the sea the most pleasing sight. Ingrid hesitated before joining him, bowl clutched to her chest.

“What in particular?”

Ashe stirred his stew thoughtfully with the tip of his finger. Heat didn’t bother him, he’d told her once in the early days of their knighthood, because his pickpocket training had deadened a lot of nerves in his hands. It was why he excelled at archery: he hadn’t needed to worry about his calluses developing faster because snatching soap from hot oil was a lot worse on his fingers than a bowstring.

And then he’d been mortified to learn Ingrid hadn’t even known of his ‘shameful past’ and had babbled all sorts of promises that he had always hated it and valued chivalry and goodness so that he could help create a kinder world without crime. Ingrid, for her part, was mortified simply because she knew so little about him despite sharing a class and sharing a war and sharing a barracks.

“Different from our books,” Ashe said after a few more stirs with his scarred and scalded fingers. “The very stories that inspired us, the chivalric ideals that we always dreamed of meeting.”

“Nothing is ever like the storybooks, no.”

“I suppose they’re called ‘legends’ for a reason,” Ashe sighed. He ate his stew mechanically, gaze fixed on the distant shimmering waters below. Ingrid stared at her own bowl, struggling to rally the motivation to eat like she never had required before.

“You were always too forgiving of Felix and Sylvain,” Ingrid said to her stew. She poked it with her spoon reluctantly. “For mocking your reading tastes, I mean.”

Ashe chuckled. “Well, they were right in a way. Felix especially.”

Ingrid scowled instead and shoveled her first bite of stew into her mouth. “He was wrong. Both of them were,” she said through the tender meat. “The legends might have been excessive, but there’s nothing wrong with being inspired by them.”

Ashe, having already polished off his stew, watched her thoughtfully. “They said the same thing, actually.”

“What?” Ingrid yelped. She wiped sauce off her chin with the back of her hand and glared at Ashe like he was at fault. He winced, and she turned her glare on her bowl in unspoken apology. “They never told _me_ that. They just teased me.”

“Well, _I’m_ not teasing you,” Ashe was quick to say. “Maybe I’m naïve even after all this...bloodshed, but…Such legends are _meant_ to inspire, aren’t they? Sure, the justifications change, but valuing things like loyalty and bravery and kindness are universal concepts, right?”

Ingrid blinked at her bowl, then lifted her head to blink at Ashe. The same resolute set of his jaw that he’d worn at their knighting and the same one just earlier in the market was joined by a sparkling passion in his eyes she hadn’t seen since they were children with adventure tales piled high on a library table; one she hadn’t seen since they became adults with red blood staining their blue Kingdom armor.

“Maybe nothing’s so different after all,” she said, quietly enough Ashe strained forward to hear her better. The shy beginnings of the setting sun cast shadows over his face, but his expression didn’t dim. “The people we’re sworn to protect are just as blinded by those ideals as we were—still are. We all value the same things. But…”

Her dead friends and nameless foes’ faces swam to her mind’s eye and she cut herself off, emotion thick in her throat. Ashe, fortunately, completed her thought.

“We haven’t achieved our dreams of knighthood yet, Ingrid,” he said. He patted her arm with his bare, nerveless hand like the very act was a promise. “It’s our duty to protect these people in the name of justice and kindness and…and chivalry, right? That’s all those legends we read are. Things to inspire us into goodness, not the reasoning behind them. Ideals to follow of our own accord, not commands to follow to the letter.”

His crooked grin shared a secret with her, like the phrase should mean something when she knew so little of him. It didn’t matter; the very words relaxed the tension in her shoulders. “I’m not so certain,” Ingrid said as Ashe withdrew. “You seem more and more like a proper knight with each thing I learn about you.”

Ashe blushed bright red in an instant. “I’m just keeping pace with you,” he insisted. Ingrid stifled a pleased smile and finished the last of her stew.

“This has been a comfort to me,” she said, getting to her feet and offering him a hand up. “You’ve given me much to think about.”

“No, you’ve comforted _me_ ,” Ashe replied, the proud blush hardly fading from his freckled cheeks as they headed back to her pegasus. “Your smile is less sad.”

“Huh?” Ingrid clapped her hand over her mouth like she had to check, and—yes, her lips had quirked up. “I—I apologize, this is not a subject to take lightly and—”

Ashe only shook his head. “It’s a difficult one, yes, but that just makes it more important, right? And the important things are worth smiling about.”

Her pegasus pranced over once she caught their scent on the breeze. Ingrid stroked her steed’s nose and tightened the saddle again. “That’s a wonderful sentiment. I…look forward to chatting with you more on this. Maybe over dinner tonight.”

Ashe, hand outstretched towards the saddle, inhaled a half-gasp, half-wheeze. “Dinner!” he repeated, voice cracking. “I’m—I’m on cooking duty tonight!”

“You’re—” Ingrid’s eyes widened. She stared at the sky, their empty bowls, and the setting sun. She hopped into the saddle, taking to the air hardly before Ashe had settled behind her. “Sorry you’re stuck keeping pace with me,” she shouted into the harsh wind.

“I’ll ride a wyvern next time,” Ashe yelled back. “We still didn’t buy those spices!”

Later, once they’d profusely apologized to the soldier who’d picked up Ashe’s missed shift, _next time_ finally processed in Ingrid’s mind. The spices might be for a Leicester recipe, the taste for Kingdom soldiers, but sharing a delicious meal with friends, comrades and strangers was a universal pleasure.


End file.
